Republican U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance said the issues he hears the most about, including during a stop in Mount Vernon on Monday, are concerns about the southern border and inflation.
Vance held a town hall at the Woodward Opera House on Monday afternoon.
He told the Mount Vernon News that voters complain about “the fact that we basically have become a lawless country that doesn't protect its own southern border. The fact that through that border, we’ve got a lot of drugs and a lot of crime pouring in, making our communities less safe.”
On the other side of the coin, inflation hits them right in the pocketbook.
“If you buy anything in Joe Biden's economy, it costs more. It costs more to fill your car up, it costs more to buy groceries, it costs more to buy clothes, it costs more to buy appliances,” Vance said.
People worry about other issues, such as China and the Russia-Ukraine situation, he said. But more than anything, they talk about the southern border and inflation.
He proposes legislation to fund and finish Donald Trump’s border wall. It would declare Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations to enable the U.S. military to fight them. He would cut off welfare benefits for noncitizens in the country so that they can’t enjoy the generosity of the country unless they follow U.S. laws.
The federal government needs to defend the national economy from threats like the Chinese government’s policy of poaching the U.S. manufacturing base. That policy “has been horrible for a lot of middle-class Ohio workers,” he said.
The federal government needs to defend the rights in the U.S. Constitution, including the right to life, the right to keep and bear arms and the right to speak your mind, he said.
“One of the great tragedies right now in our country is that the First Amendment is really under assault by these technology companies, which are censoring people for uttering unpopular views,” Vance said.
Vance decided to run when he became concerned on a personal level about the future of the country.
“I just had three young kids here – four-year-old, two-year-old, a three-month-old – and got to a point personally where I was sick of complaining about what was going on and felt the need to get involved and do something myself,” he said.
The campaign is down to the final five or six weeks with the primary on May 3.
“Our strategy, as you probably know, is to do as many town halls as we can, meet as many voters as we can, answer as many questions as those voters have,” Vance said.
The native of Middletown served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq, graduated from Ohio State University and received his law degree from Yale Law School before becoming a Silicon Valley investor.
